SCRTC Community Network Jan./Feb. 2020

We’ve arrived in the future

by Jeff Eaton - SCRTC General Manager

Welcome to 2020! I sincerely hope you and those close to you had a superb holiday season and that this new year is off to a wonderful start.

Something about starting not only a new year, but also a new decade makes 2020 feel like a year especially full of promise. For so long, the 2020s have seemed like the distant future. Now, we have arrived!

It’s entertaining to look back and see what Hollywood, science fiction authors and big thinkers predicted for the future.

While I’m still waiting on the flying car and weekend trips to the moon that science fiction promised us, I catch myself from time to time thinking about how some of the things we take for granted every day would seem so futuristic to us just 20 or 30 years ago. Here in the future, all of us carry around personal communication devices in our pockets that allow us to make video calls with people all over the world. We can instantly download practically any book, movie or song in the world right to our tablets.

While we don’t exactly have Rosie from “The Jetsons,” we do have robots that vacuum our floors, manufacture products and even help perform surgeries.

We have software that can share photos around the world, alert us to emergencies and order almost anything we need for home delivery. Our watches can help detect heart problems. Our cars can give us directions to anywhere we want to go. And our homes can turn on lights, lock doors and change the temperature with just the sound of our voice.

Many of these things are becoming a normal part of our daily routine, but the 1980 or 1990 version of myself would have seen them as straight out of science fiction.

For those of us at SCRTC, it’s rewarding to know our network is what brings the future to our part of Kentucky. Whether it’s our broadband service at your home or our network providing vital infrastructure to businesses, we’re right at the heart of all of this futuristic technology. We worked hard to make that network and our company even better in 2019. It was certainly a year of meaningful accomplishments and noteworthy milestones for us.

• Increased fiber optic service so that 58% of customers have been cut over to fiber.

• Launched a new and improved website at scrtc.com.

• Began offering internet service plans that did not require phone service.

Turning the page to 2020, we have one major goal in mind that will demand most of our focus and resources in the year ahead: expanding our network so three quarters of our customers can be moved over to fiber optics.

Knowing that the only thing certain about the future is change, I think SCRTC is primed to accomplish these things and more. We’re thankful for the opportunity to serve you in 2020 — and in the future.